title: What the newspapers say about medication adherence: a content analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This study investigates the coverage of adherence to medicine by the UK and US newsprint media. Adherence to medicine is recognised as an important issue facing healthcare professionals and the newsprint media is a key source of health information, however, little is known about newspaper coverage of medication adherence.
  
  
  METHODS
  A search of the newspaper database Nexis®UK from 2004-2011 was performed. Content analysis of newspaper articles which referenced medication adherence from the twelve highest circulating UK and US daily newspapers and their Sunday equivalents was carried out. A second researcher coded a 15% sample of newspaper articles to establish the inter-rater reliability of coding.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Searches of newspaper coverage of medication adherence in the UK and US yielded 181 relevant articles for each country. There was a large increase in the number of scientific articles on medication adherence in PubMed® over the study period, however, this was not reflected in the frequency of newspaper articles published on medication adherence. UK newspaper articles were significantly more likely to report the benefits of adherence (p = 0.005), whereas US newspaper articles were significantly more likely to report adherence issues in the elderly population (p = 0.004) and adherence associated with diseases of the central nervous system (p = 0.046). The most commonly reported barriers to adherence were patient factors e.g. poor memory, beliefs and age, whereas, the most commonly reported facilitators to adherence were medication factors including simplified regimens, shorter treatment duration and combination tablets. HIV/AIDS was the single most frequently cited disease (reported in 20% of newspaper articles). Poor quality reporting of medication adherence was identified in 62% of newspaper articles.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Adherence is not well covered in the newspaper media despite a significant presence in the medical literature. The mass media have the potential to help educate and shape the public's knowledge regarding the importance of medication adherence; this potential is not being realised at present.
authors.affiliation: Clinical and Practice and Research Group, School of Pharmacy, Queen's University Belfast, 97 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 7BL, Northern Ireland. j.mcelnay@qub.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Nicola A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Goodfellow
authors.forename: Basima A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Almomani
authors.forename: Ahmed F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Hawwa
authors.forename: James C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: McElnay
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D059019:Clinical Coding; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008297:Male; D008402:Mass Media; D055118:Medication Adherence; D009524:Newspapers as Topic; D011643:Publishing; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D006113:United Kingdom; D014481:United States